


Stars

by BurningTea



Category: Leverage
Genre: Caring Eliot, Gen, Parker needs reassurance, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 13:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7685590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot used to tell stories to Aimee about the stars, but he's always resisted the idea that they control his fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tidal_race](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tidal_race/gifts).



> This is from a prompt on Tumblr, and tidal_race gave me the prompt 'Stars' and Eliot/anyone.

When Eliot was younger, he used to sit out at night with Aimee sometimes and they’d point out constellations to each other. Some of them were real. Some weren’t. They’d tell each other stories about what the heroes in the stars might get up to, and Eliot got into reading myths from all over the place partly so he could reinvent them to amuse Aimee. She preferred the women to be getting in on the heroics. 

Thing is, talking about winning battles and completing quests, with Aimee tucked up against him, all while staring up at the vast bowl of the sky, made him even more restless. His dad kept talking about Eliot’s future like it was already decided, and he couldn’t stand the thought of his entire life being written out for him, like his stars were already aligned and his fate determined. 

Aimee and Eliot had spent plenty of time in English Lit pulling apart the character of Romeo as a whiny, irresponsible kid who blamed everyone else for his issues at every turn, stars included. A person should take responsibility for their own actions, no matter how dark they might seem, and no matter how little choice there seemed to be. There was always a choice, and accepting it was important. 

That line near the end, though? About defying the stars? Yeah. If the stars had being smothered in a tiny, hole-in-the-wall store for decades down as Eliot’s fate, then Eliot was going to have to defy them. 

Or his dad. Whichever.

The stars shouted less when he told them. 

 

**********************

Over the years, he came to know the constellations from all around the curve of the Earth. He used them to navigate, and sometimes they were all he could see from a cell window. They kept him company, the stars and the memories of the stories he’d share with Aimee. They kept him connected during times when it seemed like he was completely adrift. He followed them back to Aimee more than once.

There came a time, though, when he couldn’t get back fast enough, and it was just better, kinder, to let her think he’d chosen a different fate. Probably safer for her to be cut free of Eliot Spencer and his increasingly dangerous contacts. Some fates were all too clear to see, stars or no.

He stopped telling himself those stories and the stars were nothing more than points in the sky.

*********************

When he was drafted in for the job with Nate Ford, Eliot almost understood cursing the stars.

They were irritating and unhinged, the lot of them. Nate was the worst of all, no matter what Eliot said about Parker. At least she had the justification that she was wired differently, and she’d made choices that most people didn’t have to. Eliot could tell. Just because it hadn’t been in a war-zone didn’t mean the girl was a stranger to battling.

Still, he’d chosen to work with them and he’d own his choices, so he saw the job through. He saw it through when it stretched beyond not getting paid and became about saving people. He saw it through even when it went to Hell and took them with it.

They always fought and tricked and conned their way back out, even when they went up against Moreau, the darkest star in Eliot’s personal sky. Eliot followed Nate Ford and got to shake his fist at that particular star, before walking away from it for good.

They became a steam that didn’t have to defy the stars. They were the stars, manipulating fate for others until they’d squeezed out the story that should exist.

And Eliot found himself choosing to stay, each and every time he had to make the decision again. 

**********************

It took him a while longer to realize he’d not just found a team, but a family.

It was little things. Fighting for them was his job, and dying for them would be a part of that. He’d always been the kind to be willing to die for a cause. 

Cooking for them, though, caring for them and keeping them safe in ways that had nothing to do with fists and blood and muscle, crept up on him.

He was doing it before he knew he was doing it.

He called Nate on his drinking and pulled him up on plans that risked crossing one of the many lines Eliot surrounded himself with. He appreciated Sophie and listened to her when she needed it, because the woman was so good at saying what others needed to hear that sometimes her own voice was lost. 

He rolled his eyes at Hardison and watched his back, and didn’t understand how deeply he needed the hacker’s trust and lack of fear until he thought he’d lost it over Moreau. 

Parker needed more reassurance than the others, that she was doing the right thing. That she wasn’t wrong on some deep level. Even when the others guided or comforted her, it didn’t seem to stick the same way it did when Eliot tried it. Not when it came to some of the ways Parker saw the world. 

Eliot took to sitting with her on rooftops.

He didn’t always know what to say. Sometimes, it was easy enough to pull up words that soothed or steadied. It helped that he meant it, that he got Parker and she got him in ways the others just didn’t. Sure, she wound him up and he confused her, and sometimes it was deliberate. That didn’t matter, though. Didn’t count. He got her. 

There were times getting her wasn’t enough to get the words flowing. 

Eliot hadn’t ever been so free with his words as he had been back with Aimee, back before the cells and the missions and the knowledge he’d crammed into his skull. 

One night, when he couldn’t think of anything to say to help Parker, he looked up and saw the stars and started talking. He told her one of the tales Aimee had helped him make up, about a woman who fought off a whole slew of monsters to save her people, and he smiled as he remembered Aimee’s eyes lighting up.

It didn’t hurt as much as it used to.

When he was done, Parker leaned into him and pushed at his shoulder. He let himself rock, swaying back towards her, and caught sight of the light in her eyes. 

After that, he sat out with Parker under the night sky enough times he told her all of the stories, and it felt like maybe fate had guided him where he was meant to be after all.


End file.
